This invention relates broadly to the art of medical lavage devices and particularly to those which can be used for quickly exchanging fluids of body cavities.
Lavage is defined as the washing out of hollow organs by copious injection and reinjections of fluids. Gastric lavages, for example, are used for a wide variety of medical situations including poisonings, upper GI, bleeding, ulcers, etc. The normal current method of performing such a gastric lavage involves the insertion of a tube into a patient's stomach through his nose or mouth. The medical personnel conducting the lavage inject saline solution into the patient'stomach via the tube with a syringe. After waiting a few seconds, to allow mixing, this solution is sucked back through the tube with the syringe, the syringe is disconnected from the tube and the medical person performing the lavage places his or her thumb over the tube to prevent leaking of gastric contents onto the patient, the bed, the floor, or the doctor. The medical person's hands are thereby contaminated. The medical person gets a second syringe that has been filled with saline slurry just like the first, and while the first syringe is emptied in a waste pan the second syringe is used to repeat the process. This process is repeated cycle after cycle until the lavage procedure is completed. Such a procedure is extremely messy, non-sterile, and is very time consuming. It is an object of this invention to provide a lavage apparatus which is not messy to use, which allows personnel and equipment to remain sterile, and with which a lavage procedure can be quickly performed.
A number of double cylinder lavage syringes have been suggested in the past, however, none of these has achieved wide-spread popular use because they are difficult and expensive to construct, and/or because they do not operate efficiently. With regard to efficient operation, Walton U.S. Pat. No. (3,818,907) describes a double cylinder lavage syringe in which two pistons thereof are always simultaneously operated. As the pistons are simultaneously pulled out of cylinders, a check valve system is intended to cause one cylinder to fill with a fresh solution while the other cylinder sucks fluid out of a body organ. Both of the cylinders are attached to a common tube which is extended into the organ. However, it appears that this system is complicated to construct and does not prevent a "bleed through" of fluid into the improper cylinder, that is, a cross-mixing of clean and waste fluids, especially if the lavage tube becomes clogged. Thus, it is an object of this invention to provide a lavage apparatus which not only is relatively easy and inexpensive to construct but which also prevents "cross-mixing". With regard to ease of construction, it is an object of this invention to provide a lavage device which is so economical to construct that it can be disposable.
U.S. Pat. No. 13,975 to Buhler, U.S. Pat. No. 3,818,907 to Walton and U.S. Pat. No. 3,159,312 to Sciver, II all disclose systems wherein a common tube is connected to side-by-side cylinders via Y connected tubes away from the cylinders. Such an arrangement is not only complicated and awkward to use, but provides inefficiencies and allows mixing of contaminated and uncontaminated fluids as well. Thus, it is an object of this invention to provide a lavage apparatus which has a common exchange tube as a rigid element attached to a housing which prevents mixing and provides highly efficient pump action.
Yet another difficulty with some of the prior art lavage systems is that their structures, including check valves used therewith, are difficult and expensive to construct. It is an object of this invention to provide a lavage apparatus whose main components can be easily molded of resinous plastic and whose elements can be easily combined.